Amidst Historic Decline in Gun Violence, Community Violence Intervention Programs are Going to Scale in Four Communities with Three Others in the Pipeline

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Amidst Historic Decline in Gun Violence, Community Violence Intervention Programs are Going to Scale in Four Communities with Three Others in the Pipeline

With gun violence in Chicago dramatically declining, public officials, community leaders and funders of a major effort to scale up community violence intervention (CVI) programs gathered at a high school in Little Village today to mark the city’s progress and provide an update on the work. As of this summer:

  • Under an initiative announced last year called Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago, or “SC2,” four communities are now “scaling up” CVI programs with the goal of serving 75 percent of the individuals at highest risk of shooting or being shot: North Lawndale, Austin, Humboldt Park and Little Village.
  • CVI Leaders in three additional communities, Garfield Park, New City and Englewood, continue to develop plans to take CVI to scale.
  • More than 3500 individuals in the seven SC2 neighborhoods have received CVI services, including outreach efforts aimed at reducing conflict, and support services such as life coaching, trauma treatment, education and job training. This represents a little over a third of the estimated number of high-risk individuals in these neighborhoods.
  • Citywide, publicly and privately funded CVI programs serve nearly half of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods.
  • According to the city, gun violence citywide is down for six of the last eight years; this year, through mid-July, all shootings, including fatal and non-fatal, are down 43 percent, and homicides are down 32 percent.

Susan Lee, interim Executive Director of SC2, said, “This scaling effort is only possible because of the extraordinary level of collaboration among the public and private sectors and the community. Collectively, we are building a model for public safety that empowers community organizations, complements traditional policing and should be a permanent feature of Chicago’s public safety strategy.”

Lee, who served as Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under Mayor Lori Lightfoot and has been working for CVI organization Chicago CRED since 2016, moderated a panel of local CVI leaders, including:

  • Matt DeMateo of New Life Centers, which serves Little Village.
  • Teny Gross of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, which serves Austin.
  • Jose Pizarro of the Alliance for Local Service Organizations (ALSO), which serves Humboldt Park.
  • Paviella Foster, Senior VP, UCAN, which serves North Lawndale.
  • Yolanda Fields, Executive Director, Breakthrough, which serves Garfield Park

DeMateo welcomed the attendees to the neighborhood and pointed out that Little Village, after a surge in gun violence last year, has seen an astonishing 80 percent drop in gun violence this year. He said, “CVI work begins with saving individual lives, but our collective goal is to transform whole communities. SC2 is making that possible, and if these trends continue, we will get there.”

The gathering, at Farragut High School in Little Village, 2345 South Christiana Avenue, comes at a time when gun violence in Chicago has been dropping dramatically. At the event, Mayor Johnson said, “Thanks to so many people in law enforcement, the CVI sector, our public investments to address root causes, and private funders, we will meet our goal of getting under 500 homicides this year and move us closer to our long-term goal of becoming the safest big city in America.”

The City of Chicago, Cook County, and the State of Illinois have all helped fund CVI programs in Chicago, suburban Cook County and across the state. They coordinate some of their investments through an intergovernmental task force called the Government Alliance for Safe Communities (GASC).

County Board President Toni Preckwinkle saluted GASC and the CVI community for their efforts, saying: “(The unprecedented level of collaboration and partnership behind this effort is a model for meeting our biggest challenges. The County is especially proud to be part of GASC and hopeful of seeing good results and safer communities in the coming years.)”

The State of Illinois has also played a key role in supporting CVI. At a South Side event in April hailing a new research report from Northwestern University on the positive impact of the state-funded Peacekeepers Program, Governor JB Pritzker said,  “Community violence intervention programs are proven to be effective ways of reducing violence and are worthy of our continued commitment and investment.” (NOTE: Quote is recycled from 4/17 event.)

The Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities (PSPC) is a consortium of donors and foundations formed in 2016 to support public safety strategies, including CVI. The business community, through the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, partnered with PSPC in 2024 to raise $100M to support SC2.

A joint statement from PSPC and the Civic Committee highlighted the “one table” partnership among philanthropy, business, government and community that makes SC2 possible: “All of Chicago is united behind this effort to take community violence intervention to scale and help every community and individual in Chicago thrive. We are deeply grateful to all of our financial supporters in the public and the private sectors.”

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